From 1987 to 1997 filmmaker Geoffrey O'Connor documented stories from the Amazon rainforest ranging from social conflicts and environmental devastation to scandals and crises involving celebrities, do-gooders, and once-prominent indigenous leaders who had fallen on hard times. It was a unique moment in history during which there was an unprecedented amount of contact between Western European populations and the remote indigenous societies of the Brazilian Amazon. One of the first films Geoffrey directed was the Academy Award-nominated film "At The Edge of Conquest: The Journey of Chief Wai-Wai." This documentary short is a stranger in a strange land story. It chronicles an isolated indigenous leader's first trip to Brazil's capitol to meet with government officials about a proposal to reduce the size of his people's land. Geoffrey's 1997 follow-up documentary "Amazon Journal," which received an "Outstanding Achievement Award" from the International Documentary Association in 1998, analyzed the often bizarre and complicated misunderstandings, which occurred between indigenous societies and a host of Western interlopers including journalists, environmentalists, gold miners, rock stars and the filmmaker himself. To produce Geoffrey's initial work in the region, "Contact: The Yanomami Indians of Brazil," he was smuggled into Brazil's "national security zone" where he reported on the massive death and destruction wrought by a gold of rush of 40,000 Brazilian wild cat miners onto the lands of 9,000 isolated, Yanomami Indians. Geoffrey O'Connor's exclusive reports from that region documented the deaths of 1,500 Yanomami Indians from contact diseases, armed conflicts and acts of genocide.

Geoffrey O'Connor chronicled his decade-ling journey in Amazonia in his nonfiction memoire "Amazon Journal: Dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier," which had the prestigious distinction of being a New York Times and Los Angeles Times "Notable Book of the Year" in 1997. His 1995 film "Defying Death in Brazil" chronicles the work of the priest Father Ricardo Rezende who survived seven assassination attempts in a five year period as a result of his work on behalf of the sem terras, or landless peasants of the Brazilian frontier. Rezende, a priest and a poet, became the first recipient of the "Chico Mendes Award" for his work defending Amazonia's landless.

This decade of work, and in turn this website, are dispatches from a tragic moment in history captured through the lens of an American filmmaker working in close partnership with an array of generous and brilliant Brazilian collaborators.